Even though it is being billed as being held in NYC this weekend's much hyped NFL Super Bowl XLVIII is actually being held over in New Jersey at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ where, kicking off at 6:30pm EST, the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos will battle it out for the champion title. Nonetheless New York is, as the Times Square billboard (picture right) implies, in a Super Bowl State of Mind. An estimated half a million visitors are expected to descend upon both New York and New Jersey for the Super Bowl and spinoff festivities on Sunday and the days leading up to the big game. Among the attractions will be the Super Bowl Boulevard set up in Times Square from today through Sunday that includes a 60 foot high toboggan run - perfect for the snow that is forecast for Saturday night/ Sunday - although this could change. Free to the public Super Bowl Boulevard, runs for 13 blocks of Broadway from 34th to 47th streets, and includes a concert stage, photo ops with the Vince Lombardi Trophy, and an assortment of Super Bowl souvenir booths all catering to, as organizers bill it, "football-themed experiences." And on 34th Street up atop the Empire State Building through this Sunday there is a light show that is being generated by football fans on Twitter showing support for either the Seahawks or the Broncos. Meanwhile all round New York City bars and restaurants will be holding Super Bowl 48 viewing parties. Whether it snows or not plan on dressing warm for the inevitable cold weather this Sunday that will reach at highest he mid to upper 30's.

Above is a recent shot (one of many) that I shot of lower Manhattan from Jersey City. It is just one of a series of photos included in this week's New York State of Mind Amoeblog - call it the "photo issue" with one video. That music video, scroll down to very end to see/hear, is a brand new New York City hip-hop video for the artist Lucky Tatt’s song “Celebrate.” I include it because it is good and that it that brings back some of that old school NYC flavor hip-hop and even features two NYC hip-hop legends: M.O.P. and DJ Premier appear in track produced by Fizzy Womack. On the topic of hip-hop in NYC two popular rap artists are in town this week: Nipsy Hustle plays the Highline Ballroom on Jan 24 (Friday), and Waka Flocka Flame plays BB King's on 42nd Street on Monday Jan 27th.

The photos below are a hodge podge of pics I snapped over past month or two downtown and uptown Manhattan, and some over in Queens - some during the snow (which is hitting NYC hard this week) and some before the snow arrived in this crazy weather we are experiencing across the US - that includes drought in California. For more details on the actual photos and their respective locations just scroll the mouse icon over them and some text will pop up.

Above is what was once the beautiful piece of New York City architecture that was Pennsylvania Station (circa 1918) that was considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style. However this stunning building - once one of Manhattan's architectural along with Grand Central Terminal - was tragically demolished in the 1960s to make way for Madison Square Garden's current structure (the actual railway station is still underground). Tragic as this shortsighted move was, the silver lining to this dark cloud was that the absolutely ridiculous decision to destroy this magnificent building led to the landmarking and protecting of other buildings in New York City so that they would not suffer the same fate. Jackie Kennedy Onassis - a longtime advocate for historic preservation of buildings including a part of the White House - was among those outraged by such demolitions and she was instrumental, some years later, in making sure that the same fate did not happen to Grand Central Terminal - also a Beaux-Arts building - which could have been razed too in the 70's had she and others not stepped in to fight for its preservation.

Slick Rick, whose 1988 album The Great Adventures of Slick Rick was recently reissued on vinyl and is available at each Amoeba store, will be headlining at the Brooklyn Bowl on Friday, January 17th. The album whose fans include Nas (he called it the record, that featured tracks such as “'Children's Story," his favorite album of all time) is a true timeless hip-hop classic that, like Nas' Illmatic, earned the elusive five mics score from The Source magazine upon its release. What looked, at the time, like a very bright future for the artist turned out to be anything but.

Greetings from NYC where, like much of the country, it has been bitterly cold lately - with temps dropping a whopping 40 degrees in a 24 hour period earlier this week and with temperatures so low that, not only did they shut down a lot of flights in and out of the three main area airports (JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark), Tuesday's temperatures broke a 118-year-record when they dropped to 4 degrees - but with the wind factor it felt like minus 15. As someone used to Northern California's much milder and overall seasonally more balanced weather what is so striking about NY weather is how it can go from this extreme freezing cold weather to the polar opposite of unbearably hot and humid in the summer months.

Last month's protest outside the main New York Public Library (photo above that I snapped) addressing the subject of library cutbacks in New York City at the expense of condo developments was a recurring theme at last week's inauguration of New York City's 109th mayor Bill de Blasio - a political leader who has presented himself as a man of the people and has clearly given hope to those poorer, struggling New Yorkers across the five boroughs. During his inauguration ceremony last Wednesday outside City Hall many de Blasio team members and supporters of the new mayor attacked the surge of luxury condos over the past decade in New York City at the expense of increasingly fewer affordable housing complexes - all under the watch of outgoing mayor Bloomberg. Expect this to be a recurring topic during the year ahead.

New Years Day 2014, New York City where last night a million patient people packed into the Times Square area - a lot of them out of town visitors getting there hours in advance - to try and get a good standing spot to check out the festivities amid all the usual Times Square giant bright active LED screens towering overhead, check out numerous performers including Miley Cyrus and Deborah Harry, and at the stroke of midnight get to see firsthand the famous ball drop that is mostly seen on TV including a lot of New Yorkers who can't deal with all the crowds and waiting. At around that same time over in Brooklyn new New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio got sworn into office by the Attorney General of NY Eric Schneiderman in a modest low key ceremony right outside the family's longtime home that they now leave to take up residence in Gracie Mansion. Then early this afternoon here the official ceremony took place downtown at City Hall where Bill de Blasio took the oath of office administered by none other than former President Bill Clinton to become the first Democrat mayor of the city in 20 years and the 109th mayor of New York City.